


Post Stall

by ballantine



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Airships, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Canon, Angst, Depression, M/M, Post-Season/Series 03, Post-Series, Reconciliation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-23
Updated: 2016-10-19
Packaged: 2018-08-10 12:10:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 21,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7844383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ballantine/pseuds/ballantine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Several years after the pirates’ defeat at Nassau, Max has a business proposition for Silver. The problem? It requires Flint and the Walrus.</p><p>(Being an account of much unhappiness, arguing, and drinking, because what else happens when you lose a war?)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> _Post stall_ is a flight condition that occurs when an aircraft’s velocity is too low to compensate for its weight.

 

 

 

> _Across a crowded room you'll hear me howl_  
>  _I'm trying to find you but I don't know how_
> 
> \- Hamilton Leithauser + Rostam, 'Rough Going (I Won't Let Up)'

 

**I: promises fade**

 

Max descends into Tortuga on a Sunday at dusk. The lights in the dale wink up in greeting through the diminishing cloud cover. She’d almost think it pretty if she weren’t too busy trying not to be sick over the railing.

There are many reasons why she has never before left Nassau. Her distaste for traveling by airship is not even one of the most prominent, but that doesn’t lessen its potency. Underneath the nausea and anxiety is the constant needling worry about affairs back home. She knows her interests are secure enough that they don’t require her constant attention, but worry is a hard habit to break.

She hopes this trip is worth it.

She tries not to reveal her eagerness as the ship locks in to the dock. Once it’s been properly secured against the platform, she hastens to get her feet back on solid ground. Then she turns and faces the land before her.

Tortuga. Once it was known as the greatest pirate stronghold in the entire West Indies range. But it’s the nature of such a title that it cannot be held long before great powers decide to do something about it. And so Tortuga declined and Nassau rose.

They are all still waiting to see what will rise now that Nassau itself has fallen.

She makes inquiries at the port office and, having secured directions and reassured the concerned man behind the desk of her precaution, sets out for the most disreputable street in the portside district.

Where else would one expect to find Long John Silver?

—

His tavern is a small, cramped affair squeezed between a tannery and what looks to be an opium den. Despite its outside appearance, it’s surprisingly clean inside. The evening crowd is trickling in, heavier than it might be on a Sunday night in a more civilized place. Heads turn to follow her as she walks past, but beyond keeping an eye out for trouble, she pays them no mind.

Walk with your head up and an unimpressed air and most people will stay out of your path. She’d learned that from Eleanor.

As she approaches the bar, a familiar voice says from right behind her, “Now I know cannot be looking at Miss Max, queen of Nassau’s nascent criminal underworld. You’re certainly beautiful enough, but they say she never leaves New Providence Valley.”

She turns around with a warm smile. “John.”

He looks much better than when she’d last seen him, body getting hauled bloody and unconscious aboard the _Walrus_ as the remnants of Flint’s fleet scattered in retreat. He’s perhaps a little too thin and has crow’s feet beginning to form at the corners of his eyes, but his skin tone is healthy and his blue eyes bright and unclouded. She’s seen many former pirates on the streets of Nassau, wasted by drink or drug; of course John Silver would avoid such a fate.

As always with John, it takes a few seconds for one to remember he is a cripple. He always carried himself with ease on the false leg, and that appears to have not changed. Though she notices after a moment that he has added a cane to the assemblage.

He makes his way behind the bar with great alacrity. “What can I pour you? On the house, of course. I’ve got,” he makes a great to-do about peering at his sparse shelf in deep thought, “rum and ale.”

“Rum, if you please,” she says primly as she slides onto the stool in front of him.

As he pours, he says, “I take it you did not come to Tortuga to see the great sights of Portside.”

“You take correctly,” she says. “I came to talk business with you.” She looks around the room. “Though it’s of a sensitive nature, and I would prefer to speak about it in private.”

Interest sparks in his eyes.

“Well, this lot won’t be clearing out until well past midnight. Are you amenable to waiting until then?” At her nod, he asks if she has secured lodging for the night and offers her a clean room to rest in until their appointment. She accepts.

She takes a sip of her drink. “How long have you owned this place?”

“It’s Madi’s tavern, actually. I’m just the face of it. I landed on her doorstep about three years ago, and she was gracious enough to hire me on. Haven’t looked back since.”

Max has heard much of the daughter of Mr. Scott but has never met her. She looks around as if she might catch a glimpse of this other fabled queen. “So are the two of you — ?”

“We’re married in our hearts, if not the eyes of man or God.” He says it matter-of-factly, no shame to be seen.

She always did like John Silver. Even when he was being a complete and utter bastard, that had remained true.

—

Upstairs she is introduced to Madam Madi, who gives John a curious look before shooing him back down to the tavern. She sweeps Max with a look that sees all and then nods and leads her down the corridor to a small private room on the end.

The room is furnished modestly, but its window overlooks the port. The mountain pass stands gargantuan in the distance, dwarfing all man-made structures in a constant reminder that, no matter how far they’ve come, they are still bound by earth.

Max studies the view and wonders how it is possible that one mountain could look so alien from another. Perhaps it seems this way because she has only ever known those that surround Nassau.

“I've heard a lot about you,” Madi says from the doorway. “From John, and my father.”

Max turns to look at her and tries to parse her meaning. Did Mr. Scott tell her of the whore hanging around the Guthrie establishment? Would he have discusssed Eleanor’s affair with his daughter? Does Madi take issue with the idea of a woman loving another woman?

Her worries evaporate as Madi continues, “I always loved hearing about you, especially near the end of my father’s life. I was raised in isolation, you see. The only tales my mother told of the outside world were all about subjugation and misery. The idea that there was someone else out there, someone who looked like me and who also found a position of strength and power — it was a lovely thought.”

Max wishes fiercely that Mr. Scott hadn’t withheld the truth of his life during those months after Eleanor was arrested. What might it have been like, to know of Madi when she was younger? They could have written to each other.

She smiles tentatively at the other woman. “Well, I’m very glad to meet you now.”

Madi smiles back. Then she turns away and starts briskly pulling bedding out of a set of drawers. Over her shoulder, she asks, “What has brought you to Tortuga? I hear passage in and out of Nassau is strictly controlled as of late.”

“It is not without its difficulties,” she admits. “But I have certain strings I can pull. And if I am successful in my venture, it will have been more than worth the trouble. I came because I have a business proposition for John. Potentially a very lucrative one.”

Madi straightens up from the bed and, kindred spirit or no, fixes her with a coldly assessing look. It’s the look of a woman who has witnessed a war and wishes to avoid another.

“What type of business?”

Max thinks of the word that has been ricocheting around her head since she first read the letter from Jack. Madi need not worry; the time when pirates engaged in politics and war is over. This new directive is breathtakingly straightforward in its goal:

“Treasure.”

—

It’s almost one by the time the last man stumbles out of the tavern. Madi has long since retired, but not before drawing out details from Max over dinner.

Their conversation had flowed freely but for one brief hiccup. In a moment of quiet, Max had inquired after the possibility of children, mostly out of the dubious sense that that was the type of normal question one woman might ask another. (Her main source of female companionship is the former “tyrant bitch” of Nassau and a house full of whores; what does she know of normal?)

But Madi immediately shook her head in firm denial. She said, “I watched how motherhood weighed on my mother and have no desire to shoulder that particular burden, not with everything else I have to run.”

Curiosity sparks in Max's mind at that, but all delicate inquiries about Madi's responsibilities are deftly turned towards other topics. Eventually, Max is forced to cede the ground, though she does so with more bemused respect than a grudge.

John is wiping the counter down when she returns downstairs. There is no one else in the room; the door has been locked and the windows all shuttered.

“Busy night,” she comments, coming up the bar and recapturing her previous seat. “Do you always see such heavy patronage?”

John slides her a tired smile. “We get by.”

“What would you say if I told you that this time next month, you could be wealthy enough to retire?”

“I’d say you better have some substance to that claim, because I hate disappointment.”

She gets right to the point. “I’ve received news from Anne and Jack. They’ve picked up the trail of an airship scheduled to cross the eastern trades three weeks from now. It will be carrying a cache worth over 700,000 pounds.”

John raises his eyebrows. “That _is_ quite the sum.”

She continues, “I have agreed to provide the monies necessary to outfit the crew, most of whom Jack and Anne can provide. We only need an airship for them to man.”

John shakes his head and scrubs the counter with greater vigor. “I appreciate you wanting to include me in this venture, Max, but you’ll have to forgive my confusion. I’m no great shakes as an airman. I can’t navigate worth a damn. And while my cooking skills have improved dramatically, I doubt they are so highly valued as to warrant a visit from you. So why come to me?”

“You misunderstand my request, John.” She tilts her head and narrows her eyes. “But I wonder if you do so on purpose.”

“Max, my dear girl, I honestly cannot imagine what you mean.” His eyes are clear as he says it, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything, not with John Silver.

She decides to get right to the point. “When Jack suggested we turn to you for aid, he wasn’t fishing for the help of a navigator or cook. He was looking for Flint’s old quartermaster.”

He pauses, scrubbing hand going still and eyes fixed on the counter in front of him.

“He thought if anyone knew of Flint’s whereabouts, it would be you,” she says. Once, she might have injected an apologetic note, but the past few years have been hard on everyone. Nowadays she reserves softness for herself and her own. And while she may retain a certain fondness for John, this group does not include the man who once stomped someone to death on the floor of her establishment.

“Flint,” John says finally, spinning around and busying himself with tidying up the sparse bar shelf. He says over his shoulder, “What could you possibly want with that washed-up drunk?”

“They say he still has the _Walrus_ stashed away somewhere. We need that airship.”

John snorts and shakes his head without looking around. “Even if he still has it — if he hasn’t lost it in a card game or pawned it — what kind of condition do you imagine it is in? The odds that it’s fit to fly are vanishingly small.”

“And yet that likelihood is still better than what we have to work with currently.” She studies the tense line of his shoulders, wondering not for the first time what went down during the notorious fracture of the _Walrus_ crew. The John Silver she once knew did not hold grudges; grudges require emotional investment, and he used to be downright miserly with that.

He turns around at last and leans back against the bar. The motion might look casual if it wasn’t so obviously distributing weight away from his bad leg.

“What’s in all this for me?”

Negotiations, she can do. “If you choose only to share information about Flint’s location, I can promise you a quarter-share.” She watches him nod and take that in before adding, “But if you came along and assist us in procuring Flint and the gold, you’d get a full partner’s share.”

A sum like that would be enough to keep the bar running without a single customer for twenty years. Possibly even longer. It would be hard enough for anyone to resist, but for a crippled man with a wife and tavern to support —

“I don’t think I can help you,” he says.

“I see,” she says after a moment.

He looks away. “It’s just not a good idea. I promised I would never speak to Flint again.”

 _Promised who_ , she wants to ask. But she holds her tongue; it’s not relevant.

She clears her throat and asks pointedly, “And what of giving up his location? Surely your promise does not forbid that?”

He nods and reaches for a scrap of paper. As he writes, he says, “I don’t know his whereabouts personally, but this man will. Tell him I sent you — hopefully he’ll cooperate. If he resists, you can always try offering him the same deal you extended to me.”

He hands her the note and she glances down to read: _William Manderly, 312 West Peak B, Inagua._

When she looks back up, he asks her, “Did you ever actually meet Billy? He didn’t exactly frequent the brothel.”

“Billy Bones, Flint’s first mate?” She motions with the note. “This is the same man?”

He'd been present when Eleanor threw her away. She remembers that much.

John nods. “He set up as a printer, afterwards. At the very least, if he rejects your offer you can be sure he’ll be polite about it.”

She nods her thanks and tucks the note carefully into her purse pocket. She is about to retire when some unnamed instinct makes her pause and say, “I’ll be departing from Dock 3 at dawn, if you change your mind.”

He doesn’t respond, so she quits to her room and smothers her bitterness in a pillow, as she become accustomed to doing many a night.

—

The sun has not yet risen above the towering peaks surrounding the dale when she makes her way back down to the port. Mornings are always a beautiful time to be down by the docks. The lifting gloom always makes it feel like the world is blossoming out like a flower.

Neither Madi nor John had been around when she took her leave, so she left a thank you note and her address on the dresser and weighed it down with a shilling. She wrote that she hoped Madi would write and that John would think of her fondly despite her dredging up old memories.

Despite all this, she is oddly unsurprised to turn onto Dock 3 and find John waiting by the gangplank, hands folded over the top of his cane like it is a mere prop. He straightens as soon as he sees her.

“You have decided to come along,” is how she greets him. She thinks she does a passable job of not sounding unbearably smug.

“Madi said I should,” is all he says. “Possibly because she could see what I would not admit.”

“That you wanted to,” Max surmises. His silence is her answer.

They board the airship and maintain their silence during the launch preparation. Through the window, she sees the sun begin to break out between the peaks. She leads him out to the viewing deck so that she may stand in its rays. For all that it is beautiful, morning at the docks is also dark.

With a loud hum, the ship begins its sharp ascension through the narrow crags of the pass. Dark slickrock slides past them on either side, close enough to reach out and touch.

Eventually she has to ask, “What changed your mind, if you don’t mind me asking? What of your promise?”

He rests his elbows on railing and looks at her. His hair, unrestrained by anything so sensible as a hat, whips around his face. It almost obscures his cutting smile.

“All promises fade, Max. But treasure? That’s forever.”

 

**II: ideas are cheap**

 

He played coy, but part of him knew from the moment Max told him her plan that he would be going with her. What’s worse is that Madi, his steely, matter-of-fact girl, acknowledged this before he was able; she’d heard the details over dinner and had his old airpack waiting on the dresser when he came up to bed. Even without approaching it, he could see the clothing and other necessities were already neatly folded inside.

He’d gotten into bed and she’d rolled over and put a hand on his chest, over his heart.

“Are you trying to be rid of me?” he’d joked, because he could not possibly talk about it in any other way. His throat felt tight at the thought.

She’d kissed him sleepily on the jaw and murmured, “Just come back to me.”

He'd like to ask her to come with and shield him from Flint the way she'd tried once before. But the tavern was too important to leave unattended. After the war her people had to scatter, and the portside tavern in Tortuga is the only hub that keeps them all connected and supplied.

So he only said, “Always,” and that was that.

—

He can’t say in all honesty that he’d missed flying. The West Indies was a particularly unforgiving range, full of impossibly high peaks that cluster together densely, creating the claustrophobic impression of spiked walls. The only good thing about being up in the air again was the quality of the light; he'd forgotten how much brighter it is than down below. Traveling through the passes over land is a dark business, with the sun only visible overhead for 8 hours before it hides again behind the black bulk of land.

It's a sign of the madness of man, that they would look up at mountains that disappeared into the clouds and take it as a challenge. John isn’t one of those men, but Flint had been.

The captain had an uncanny ability to navigate the ship onto any errant updraft. The _Walrus_ would fly at a higher altitude than almost any other airship in the sky. Sometimes they’d fly so high the air would be almost too thin to breathe. It was always risky, because emergency landing spots were more rare the higher one went, but it was precisely this risk that earned them their reputation.

The _Walrus_ was the most feared pirate ship in the entire range. Usually all it took was a merchant captain to see their colors swooping in and they’d strike immediately. Death from above. Their legacy.

And then the Battle of Nassau destroyed that legacy and sundered the crew.

John shakes himself out of his dark thoughts and scowls around at the passing rock face before retreating back inside the airship.

—

Inagua takes the better part of a day to reach. The Walrus could likely have made it in half the time, but one must lower expectations when riding commercial.

They descend into Matthew Town in the late afternoon. John watches Max’s hands turn white as the airship shudders from a late gust of wind.

“It will be interesting to see how his printing press has fared,” he says by way of distraction as the ship rights itself once more.

“It seems like a curious choice for a pirate,” she says, after a moment of composing herself.

“After the war,” _and_ _after he climbed back out of the bottle_ , “Billy wanted to find another way to fuck England. So he returned to his roots, as it were.”

“Printing?”

“Shit-stirring,” he clarifies.

The West Peak district is nestled in the foothills separating the valley proper from the mountains. John is resigned to making the long hike, but Max shakes her head and hires a carriage without comment.

“Will he be glad to see you?” She asks as they rattle and bump up the incline.

The last time he’d seen Billy, the first mate had been three sheets to the wind and holding back a spitting mad and even drunker captain from punching John’s face in.

“I’m sure he’ll be surprised,” is his evasive reply to Max.

The print shop turns out to be in the basement of a butchery. The sharp tang of raw meat and curing spices lingers in the air as they cross the threshold and descend the stairs to knock on a chipped-paint door. Next to the door is a plain plaque that reads: _West Indies Truth & Letters _.

After a long moment something thumps from behind the door and it opens. A shockingly bearded Billy stares wide-eyed out at John, who smiles gamely at him.

“Long time no — ”

Billy slams the door shut — or he tries to; John, moving fast, sticks his metal boot in the doorway and prevents it from closing all the way.

“What do you want, Silver?” Billy shouts through the scant opening.

“Well, if you stop acting like such a twat, I could tell you,” he says pleasantly, as if his heart hadn’t started doing double time the moment he saw his former crew mate.

“Gentlemen,” says Max. “We are attracting attention.”

John and Billy both glance back to where curious faces are craning out of the butcher shop door. After a brief moment, Billy relents and reluctantly stands back to let them in.

“Good to see you too,” John can’t help but say as he cross inside.

Billy glares at him but then becomes slightly abashed when he looks down at Max. He always was a soft touch.

Max, being Max, gracefully ignores his earlier behavior. She folds her hands together and merely says, “I don’t believe our paths ever fully crossed back in Nassau.”

“He used to string men up in the square and then send you letters pinning it on me,” John says helpfully. “So you might say you two had a special sort of relationship.”

There is an awkward pause, during which Billy scowls at him across the room.

“That is not helpful,” Max says to John, admonishing.

“Why are you _here_ , Silver?” Billy asks, frustration clear in his voice.

“Haven't you guessed? I want to get the crew back together.”

“The – ?” Billy breaks off with a laugh. “You've gone mad. Or don't you remember when you abandoned us all like a disloyal coward?”

John covers his anger with a careless shrug. “We weren't a crew anymore, we were a pack of liver failures with a convoluted social hierarchy. It was either get out or go down with the rest of you.”

“Like I said,” Billy bites out. “Disloyal.”

“That's enough,” Max puts in. “John, why don't you let me handle this from here. Your talent with words seems to be lacking today.”

She’s right, of course. Ordinarily he’d be appalled at his own impolitic behavior. But he can’t help it; the moment he saw Billy’s face, it all came rushing back. The _Walrus_. The battle. Those few months when the pathetic remnants of the crew bunkered down in Saint Lucia and slowly but surely fought and drank themselves into oblivion.

Instead of apologizing, or trying to explain, he turns away and pretends to become enamored with Billy’s printing press.

It’s an easy pretense, because the press is an impressively bamboozling contraption. Its bulk takes up half the meager space of the main room. Ink stains almost every surface in sight and piles of discarded papers lay off to the side. On the nearest desktop is a pamphlet entitled _On Colonial Crop Tariffs._

For some reason, John’s mouth curves up. In a moment of extreme emotional dissonance, he feels a flush of fondness for the former first mate.

“...and you know when and where this transport is going to be?” Billy is asking Max. For a man just offered a chance at unthinkable fortune, he sounds downright unenthusiastic.

“I do, and I have a crew ready to take it. What I lack is an airship.”

“Do you know where Flint stashed the _Walrus_?” John asks him. Maybe they don’t need to fetch Flint at all. Surely Jack Rackham can fill in adequately as captain.

Billy gives him a knowing look. “As it happens, I do not. But,” he says, glancing back at Max. “I know where the captain is.”

“You don’t sound convinced about the merits of the plan,” Max says.

He shrugs uncomfortably and looks around. “I don’t like leaving the press. I doubt I’m much of a pirate any more. I trade more in ideas now.”

“Billy, you know this: ideas are cheap. Ink is expensive.” John lifts the tariff pamphlet and shakes it slightly. “Or did I miss something about your last pamphlet here being dated over two months ago?”

Billy says nothing. John lets the paper drop back down and turns to face him fully. He asks, not unkindly, “How are you making rent?”

He flushes and looks away. “I clean up the butchery after hours.”

“It’s honest work,” Max says gently. “But perhaps not necessarily suited to a man of your abilities. Help us and you’ll have funds to run your press for years to come. Maybe even expand it.”

When he still looks conflicted, she switches tack. “Your circulation must be limited with the recent tensions between England and Spain. Trade routes are less reliable than they were. You’re finding it hard to get your words to the right audiences.”

Billy remains silent, but he’s clearly listening.

Her voice turns coaxing. John’s heard her use the same tone to manipulate a brothel customer; he finds it undeniably amusing that she is using it now while talking to Billy about his political activism.

“If we are successful in this venture, I can promise you a regular delivery direct to Nassau. You can agitate right under the governor’s nose. Every lettered man will be reading your ideas, and the English won’t be able to figure out how they are getting in.”

John sees the moment Billy is caught. He mentally applauds Max. It’s a good distraction from thinking about the next part of their journey and seeing James Flint again.

 

**III: one is never homeless at the bottom of a bottle**

 

“We are in luck,” Max announces later that day when she returns from the port office. “There is an airship leaving for Barbados tonight. It will be making a brief stop in Saint Lucia two days from now.”

Billy sees Silver falter out of the corner of his eye and thinks, so he remembers the place. Good.

With a thump of his boot, Silver arrives his side and demands in an undertone, “He’s still there? Did he ever _leave_?”

“Not that I’m aware,” he replies evenly.

“But,” Silver seems to be struggling for words, which is rather a marvel to behold. “What’s he been doing this whole time? Even he cannot turn drinking into a livelihood.”

“I believe he fights in the ring. And the tavern might toss him a little something if he takes care of any — unruly customers.”

“Unruly customers,” Silver repeats. Billy understands his incredulity; when the crew was still hiding out there, unruly customers were more the rule than the exception. “Did you even attempt to persuade him to leave?”

Billy bristles. He will not be lectured about doing right by the captain, especially not from John _fucking_ Silver.

“Of the two of us, I was never the one who could get him to listen to reason,” he reminds Silver. He can’t help but feel some measure of petty pleasure when the other man goes pale.

“I can see this is going to be a pleasant journey,” Max says. “No wonder Jack wanted me to handle this. Five minutes around you two, and Anne would be reaching for her blades.”

—

For the next two days, Billy keeps to his cabin and avoids the others. He tries to get some writing done, but the upcoming meeting keeps intruding on his thoughts. The ink on his pen nub turns dry as dark memories take center stage.

He was twenty when he took up a pistol and shot the tyrannical captain who had terrorized him for three years. Staring down at the body afterwards, he waited for the shame, for the guilt society had promised he’d feel. It didn’t come, and in the next second when he realized it never would, he knew he could never go home again.

He looked up from the body and met the eyes of the man who had proffered the pistol. Flint said, “There’s a spot on this crew for you, if you want it.”

Flint was always pretending to give him choices where there were none. That was the first. Later there would be a blank page and a bloody body on the open deck. Flint pulling a gun on Richard Guthrie. Cutting the crew's rations off when they were becalmed on a high peak. Declaring war on England. On down the years, Flint creating an impossible situation and then turning to Billy with a look in his eyes saying _I dare you to refuse me._

After the war, in Saint Lucia, it was _stay_ or _go._ He’d thought for a long time that this was another non-choice, but then Silver had left and all his assumptions imploded.

Billy should have seen it coming. He wasn’t Flint, blinded by that desperate, unnamed tension that always existed between he and Silver. But the abandonment somehow took him on the chin like a bad sucker punch. After everything the crew had been through together, he’d allowed himself to forget what kind of man Silver was.

He’d snuck away during the night, just like the thief he’d been when they first met him. It took them a few hours the following morning to realize he was gone. Another day to realize he was _really_ gone. That night, Billy had to knock Flint out to stop him from drinking himself to death.

He never wants to see that expression on someone's face ever again. He’d say it was almost inhuman, but what’s more human than suffering?

Billy lasted another three months in Saint Lucia. Dooley got knifed one night and bled out under his hands. Petey was found dead another morning, and they didn’t even have to call for a doctor to know it was alcohol poisoning. It was Flint’s face as he looked down at the body that made Billy finally snap — not indifference, exactly. Vacancy. Captain James Flint was simply no longer present.

“Do you even care if I stay?” he asked him one day.

And Flint replied, “I don’t know why you haven’t left already.” He tipped his head back to accept more rum, and in the lines of his profile Billy read his own demise.

He took the next airship out of Saint Lucia that same day. Didn’t care about his destination, so long as it was elsewhere.

He thought he’d never go back. But then the choice was posed, and just like everything to do with Flint, it wasn’t really a choice at all.

—

The docks in Saint Lucia teem with crews and braying animals and children running underfoot. Billy has to grab a pickpocket’s hand away from Max’s purse twice just between the gangplank and the port office.

He feels almost guilty leading her through such a place and has to bite his tongue to stall an apology. She’s no shrinking lady, and the scene isn’t much worse than Nassau had been during its peak.

Flint’s tavern is just off the main port road. Four years ago, they had no sooner disembarked from the wounded _Walrus_ than they stumbled into Le Bandit Argent and never left.

They stand across the street from the tavern. It looks, if possible, even shabbier than he remembered. Billy glances at Silver, but the other man’s face has gone impossibly blank.

“Well,” Max says with false cheer, clearly sensing their mood. “Shall we?”

A burst of profanity and shattered glass introduce two men falling out of a nearby open window. They start grappling around in the dirt and roll several feet. Passersby step neatly around their fight as if it were an everyday occurrence.

Max visibly hesitates. “On second thought, I think I will leave the retrieval of Captain Flint to you two gentlemen. I have a message to send to Anne and Jack. You can find me at the port inn afterwards.”

Billy nods in understanding and she quickly leaves. Silver is too busy looking at the tavern like it’s a gallows built specifically for him to notice her departure. Billy waits another minute before losing his patience and shouldering past the former quartermaster.

“Stop being so dramatic,” he calls over his shoulder. “You’ll only drag this out.”

He doesn’t look back to see if Silver follows him into the tavern, but after a short delay he imagines he hears his uneven tread hit the foyer.

Once his vision adjusts to the dark interior, he looks around for Flint.

The inside of the tavern hasn’t changed much. Its air is just as smoky and full of suspended dust as it had been. Its furniture is the same knocked-about and rough-hewn tables and chairs. Its clientele still consists of desultory day drinkers and night laborers. Even the slump-shouldered figure at the end of the bar is —

“There he is,” Billy mutters sideways to Silver.

But the other man had already been staring, like his eyes were drawn to a painted target no one else could see. Billy refrains from sighing, but only just barely. Dear god, just don’t let them start _that_ up again.

“I’ll go talk to him, shall I?”

Silver nods slightly. “Probably for the best.”

Billy approaches the counter like he would a wounded boar, the whole time studying his former captain.

His frame is slighter than Billy remembers, old muscle mass likely withering away under a life of sedentary drinking. His hair is longer again, unwashed and escaping its queue to fall all about his head. When Billy comes up alongside his stool, he sees that he has been sparing about the same amount of care for his face, which is covered in an uneven and tangled red beard. No one without previous knowledge might guess who this man is or had been once upon a time.

Billy opens his mouth to say — something, he hasn’t quite figured out what yet — but his voice dies in this throat when Flint casts him a sharp glance, looking not surprised in the least to see his former first mate suddenly standing by his side.

“Billy,” he says. “Took your fucking time, was starting to think you’d never come back.”

“I,” Billy begins, wrong-footed. “What?”

Flint waves him off. “Don’t worry about it. Here, Blake!” He pounds the counter with a fist carrying old scabs from split knuckles. “More rum here, for Billy.”

The bartender, likely too used to Flint’s mercurial nature to question him, slides a glass down the counter. Then, heedless of its intended recipient, Flint snatches up the glass and downs it in one.

Billy realizes then that his former captain isn’t just drunk; he is _obliterated._ At ten past two in the afternoon.

He glances over to where Silver is hanging back in the shadows and shakes his head slightly. Silver mouths an earnest curse and then jerks his head to the door. _Let’s just get out of here._

But delaying is not really an option. They have no guarantee that they’ll ever find Flint in a ready state if they don’t take steps to ensure it themselves. Silver must read his intention on his face, because he throws his hands up in the air and half turns away.

Billy looks back to Flint, who has seemingly forgotten he is there and is now staring dully into his half-empty cup.

“Captain,” he begins — and stops again when Flint startles so violently he nearly falls off his stool.

“Billy! Jesus fucking Christ, what are you doing here?”

Right. “I — came to talk to you about a job.”

“I have no job for you,” Flint says dismissively into his cup.

“No, it’s for you. One trip, big payout, limited timeframe.”

Flint lowers his cup and looks at him skeptically. Even in his deteriorated state of mind, he is able to parse his meaning and conclude, “You need the _Walrus_.”

And Billy pauses at that, because wouldn’t everything be so much simpler if they took the ship but left the man? Flint’s the finest airman he’s ever known, but that advantage is dubious at best in his current state. From the moment he first took up the pirating life, Billy has swallowed indignities and outrages for the sake of keeping Flint’s skills. This might finally be a chance to do without.

He puts off the question, promising himself that he’ll think it over. But regardless of what he eventually decides, one thing is clear: they’ll get nowhere with these negotiations until Flint is sober.

“We can talk it over when you’ve slept for a few hours. So tell me, where do you billet?”

He watches Flint sway from side to side as he contemplates the question, and has to catch him before he falls over completely. He heaves Flint to his feet and then looks him over. His nose wrinkles as he catches a smell.

“Or are you homeless?”

Flint’s head rolls back on his neck and he fixes Billy with a contemptuous look. Under normal circumstances, this glare could make most men quake, but its potency is hampered somewhat by the bleary haze in his green eyes.

“One is never homeless at the bottom of a bottle,” he informs Billy, words coming slow but unexpectedly clear.

“Hear, hear!” cries a one-eyed drunk in the corner a few feet away.

“Glad to see his charisma is intact,” Silver mutters somewhere behind them.

Flint stiffens in his hands — or he tries to, at any rate. His body gives a single spasmodic jerk, and then the former captain blinks rapidly at the floor and says something under his breath about voices.

“Your billet, captain?” Billy reminds him. He has no idea why he addresses him as captain — if he has ever looked less like one, it was certainly not in Billy’s viewing.

“Oh for — ” Silver thumps his way forward to the bar counter, resolutely not looking their way.

Flint rears back in surprise at his appearance. With a volume usually reserved for ordering the hoisting of topgallants, he shouts directly in Billy’s right ear, “ _The_ _fuck?_ ”

Billy flinches. He underestimates both his startlement and Flint’s weight, and before he knows what’s happening, the two of them are crashing to the floor. Flint’s fall is mostly broken by Billy, who manages to also clip his shoulder against a table and land directly on his elbow. He groans.

“I’m hoping you can assist my friend and I,” he hears Silver ask the bartender, meanwhile. “We’re attempting to collect Mr. Flint, I believe he’s a regular of yours — ”

“A regular? That man could keep me in business single-handedly.”

A pause, and then: “Quite. Do you happen to know where he rooms? He’s a little under the weather, and we’d like to get him sobered up.”

“That’d be a sight to see. Well, good luck to you. Room’s upstairs. Top floor.”

“Upstairs, of course. What’s the number?”

“Well, there’s only the one.”

Silver sighs. “He sleeps in the attic, doesn’t he.”

“Would you feel better if I called it a penthouse suite?”

Billy groans again and shoves Flint off. He attempts to regain his breath as Silver walks over and looks down at him. His eyes do not so much as stray toward the now-snoring Flint curled up on the floor beside him.

“I’m so glad Max wasn’t here to witness this,” Silver says thoughtfully. “She’d probably call the whole thing off.”


	2. Chapter 2

**IV: a motivation better than bitterness and anger**

 

Hauling Flint’s dead weight up to the attic takes up most of Billy’s attention, so he barely notices Silver’s slow progress behind them. He almost forgets he’s there until Billy throws open the attic door, and Silver can’t hold back a sharp intake of breath.

Cleaning is clearly not included in the price of the room.

The contents amount to a thin cot covered in a ratty blanket, a three-legged corner table, a chamber pot that looks suspiciously full, and at least a half-dozen bottles of rum scattered across the floor. The only light comes from a square window opposite the door that is barely larger than Billy’s hand.

For the first time since stepping foot back in Saint Lucia, he is truly disturbed. He’s seen the captain drunk before, of course, but this — this scene is completely unlike him.

While he hefts Flint’s body onto the cot, Silver takes a short survey of the room. Billy hears him nudge a bottle or two and then pause. He glances over his shoulder in time to see him crouch down awkwardly and pick up a book that looks like it had been thrown viciously into the corner and left alone for months.

The spine is broken and half the pages are folded from where it had been left lying face down. Silver smoothes a hand through the dust on the cover: Defoe, _Captain Singleton._

“Perhaps he finished it,” Billy says, for lack of anything else.

Silver snaps the book closed, face unreadable. “I’d be surprised if his eyes could focus long enough to make out the words.”

The man still hasn’t really looked at Flint. Billy is hit with an unwelcome surge of pity.

He sighs. “Look, why don’t you go meet up with Max. It’s going to be a few hours before he wakes up — no sense in us both hanging about.”

Silver looks like he’s fighting mentally with himself. Ultimately he shakes his head. “I told Max I’d help fetch him. Who knows what mood he’ll be in when he awakens, you might need my help talking to him.”

At “him”, he finally glances at the comatose body on the cot, like he can’t help but sneak a glance. Billy doesn’t know which detail catches his eye — the unkempt hair, the thinness, the general air of misery, perhaps — but his expression tightens like an anchor winch.

He thinks they might have a better chance of Flint being reasonable without Silver present, but he bites his tongue. If there has ever been a situation where Silver didn’t feel the need to insert himself, Billy has yet to see it.

—

“Do we have a strategy for convincing him to give us the _Walrus_?” Silver asks eventually, when their surroundings have ceased to hold any interest and the hours seem to be crawling by. Silver is leaning against the small table, and Billy sits on the floor next to the cot with his elbows resting on his knees.

“Well. We need to find him a motivation better than bitterness and anger,” says Billy, who has spent the past two days giving the question some thought.

Silver stares at him. “This is James fucking Flint we’re talking about. Bitterness and anger are half his personality.”

“Exactly.” Billy gives him a look. “Those emotions are his resting state, they’ve ceased to push him towards anything useful. We need to offer him something to fight for.”

“Good luck to you. I tried that four years ago.” Silver’s mouth twists bitterly at the memory.

“You gave up four years ago,” Billy corrects.

Silver laughs but it’s not an amused sound. “I’d forgotten what a self-righteous bastard you can be.”

He looks up, startled by the sudden harsh tone. “Excuse me?”

“You’ve spent these past two days avoiding me like the plague, like I committed this great, unforgivable sin. But you seem to have forgotten that back then, you were nearly as bad as he. Neither of you listened to me.” Silver smiles at him in a vicious parody of sympathy. “Perhaps the rum has dulled your memories.”

“My memories are clear,” he says, ignoring the flush of shame he can feel rising to his cheeks. He’d forgotten what it is like to know someone well enough to cut them deep with just a few words.

He still wakes some nights, reaching for a bottle that’s not there. Still has nightmares where he falls into it again and ends up an old man twitching and roaring for rum as civilized folk look on in disgust and horror. He hasn’t been home since he was seventeen, but he never feels farther from Kensington than when he awakens from one of those dreams.

“For example,” he says, rallying, “I seem to recall you were the one to encourage us all to stay here in the first place.”

“I thought it would be temporary, a convenient spot to get it out of our systems.” Silver waves a hand as if to encompass the entire tavern. “Little did I realize you would all take to it like a second vocation.”  

Billy cannot believe he once thought this man could be the solution to Captain Flint. His voice starts to climb in volume. “We were suffering from a loss — ”

“Yes, believe me, I _do_ remember that small detail.”

“Just because you’ve never believed in a single damn thing your entire miserable life,” Billy begins, enjoying the way Silver’s normally composed face transforms with fury. Before he can finish the thought and perhaps provoke the other man into taking a swing, a hoarse but unmistakable voice rings out from the cot:

“If you two do not cease this idiotic line of conversation, I’m going to throw you down the stairs.” Flint rolls over and fixes them with a bloodshot but brutally cognizant glare. “We’re four floors up. I can tell you from experience, it’s not an enjoyable tumble.”

After a moment of stunned silence, Silver shuts his mouth and stares, as transfixed as a snake in a wicker basket.

With a muttered curse, Flint sits up and swings his legs over the side of the cot. He glances quickly between the two of them and then knuckles hard at his eyes. “I’d assume you’re a figment of my imagination, but even my mind would not conjure up such an irritating display. What time is it?”

Billy eyes him warily. “About half past seven.”

“Right, then.” Flint drops his hand from his face. “That’s about enough time for you to fetch me a washbasin, say your piece, and then get the fuck out.”

“On a tight schedule, are you?” Billy asks, finally climbing back to his feet. He takes a moment to stretch; his body has reached an age where it does not shake off stiffness with the ease it once did.

“Let’s just say I have somewhere to be in two hours.” His voice contains a dangerous edge, like he is one second from snapping. The man must have a devil of a headache right now. He’s hardly going to be easy to deal with.

Billy’s not proud of what he does next, but his lingering anger with Silver gets the better of him.

“I’ll go fetch that washbasin,” he announces, heading swiftly for the exit. He can’t resist glancing back before the door closes behind him; Silver is staring after him, eyes wide and livid.

And Flint is looking directly at Silver.

 

**V: helps to be a little drunk**

 

It is hard to look at him.

Not as difficult as looking at Miranda’s body in the Charlestown square, but worse than the moment Hal Gates finally gave up on him. These moments all belong on a spectrum. He catalogs them in the vain hope that someday he might look back at all that he’s endured and find the strength to go on.

What a fucking daft idea.

James leans forward, elbows on knees, and only narrowly curtails a motion to put his head in his hands.

“You’re back.” The words come out flat and loud. These days, he either speaks with a battering ram or not at all.

John looks around the squalid, cramped room. He doesn’t seem to find it easy to look at him either, which is new. He’s never known a man more ready to match his gaze unblinkingly than John Silver — not unless he was smiling, and then he always had to glance away, like the sincere curve of his mouth was something he felt compelled to hide.

John says, “And you’re still here.”

James barks out a harsh laugh at that, taking them both by surprise.

The sun has not risen on a day in these past four years that he has not questioned why he is still dragging himself along. There’s a certain dark humor that the other man’s words could so closely skim the surface of the truth without breaking through.

After a protracted pause, a grim sort of understanding comes over John’s face. Clever, he was always so damn clever.

“Call me sentimental, but I thought this was the best tavern to continue existing in,” James says, to cover the moment.

John looks out the small window to the busy street below. “Don’t kid yourself, it’s not even the best tavern in Saint Lucia.”

James is still a little drunk from before, he’s sure that has to be making this worse. He’s almost woozy with the shock of John standing within easy touching distance. Just being near him is like pulling half a bottle of rum down in one go. A few feet and several years are all that James would have to cross.

Instead of making the attempt, he pointedly looks away from him and casts about the floor, shuffling a few of the bottles around with his foot until he finds one that sloshes back. He fits two fingers around the neck and flips it neatly up in the air, catching it with his other hand. The move is more for self-diagnosis than show; he’s going to need his coordination for tonight.

John is watching him now, but his eyes are flat and cool. James toasts him ironically and takes a quick dose.

“This doesn’t have to take long,” he says when he lowers the bottle again. “Just tell me what you’re after and we can end this uncomfortable scene.”

“Am I making you uncomfortable?”

John Silver: choosing mind games over getting to the point since whenever the fuck he was born.

James is no longer drunk enough to get away with whipping the bottle at the other man’s head, so he has to make do with glaring. He is distantly pleased to see the imperceptible tightening of John’s posture as a result.

He takes another drink, but mostly just to see if he can provoke another reaction.

Before his efforts can bear any fruit, the door swings open again with a creak. Billy comes through with a wide, shallow basin full of water, which he sets down on the corner table. Then he turns and looks down at James.

The startled nervousness he wore earlier has worn off, and in its place is the familiar skepticism that accompanied James on damn near every prize and venture for the better part of a decade. James suppresses a sigh and stands up.

“Heard something curious downstairs just now,” Billy says, folding his arms. “Bartender said you’re fighting some monster of a man down the street in two hours’ time.”

“You have a _fight_?” John repeats from the corner, disbelieving. “Tonight?”

James walks over to the basin. “It’s more like an hour and a half at this point, but yes.”

“But — look at you. You haven’t even sobered up yet, how can you possibly fight and win in this state?”

He sluices water over his face. “Helps to be a little drunk,” he mutters before ducking his head again.

It’s true. Despite appearances this was all a calculated decision — there’s a sweet spot going into a fight night. He’d be useless in the ring if he waited and let the hangover come on full bore, but by the time the fight is done his blood will be up and he’ll be ready to drink again. Just because he’s a drunk doesn’t mean he has to be foolish about it.

He continues scrubbing at his face and hair, movements slow and methodical like his pulse isn’t beating to quarters. In his mind’s eye, he is walking out on the open deck of the _Walrus_ after killing Mr. Gates. Just waiting for his sins to be discovered, and for the gunshot that will shortly follow.

Why are they _here_? Now, after all this time?

He ignores their presence and strips off his shirt. The quality of silence in the room seems to change immediately, as the other two men take in his back. He knows what they’re seeing: the proliferation of scars both large and small. He’s acquired more wounds in four years in Saint Lucia than he did in twenty years on the decks of airships _._

He doesn’t glance around to see their expressions. Picking up the ragged washcloth folded over the lip of the basin, he sets about scrubbing down the essentials. The crowds at the fights don’t give a whit if their entertainment has maintained a hygienic regime, but it’s one of the last scraps of military still clinging to him. Though just barely, judging from the smell of his shirt.

“We came into port with Max,” Billy says after a moment. “She’s been in contact with Rackham.”

“Rackham’s still flying?” He asks before he can stop the words. But the idea that _Jack Rackham_ would outlast them all….

“Not at present. He is on the trail of a big prize.” Billy hesitates before adding, “He lacks an airship.”

Logic falls into place like the afterburn of gut rot grog. He turns around and looks at Billy. “And you want to use the _Walrus_ to capture this prize.”

Billy exchanges a glance with John, who shifts and looks away.

“Your skills would also be welcomed by everyone in the outfit,” Billy says quietly, almost reluctantly.

James addresses Billy, but his eyes are square on John. “It’s not here. The _Walrus_. She’s gone.”

“Gone?” Billy shakes his head, not following. “What do you mean _gone_?”

“Yes, do tell us, _Captain_ ,” John says, dark gaze finally locking straight onto his and burning with something other than dismissal. He is almost vicious in his lack of surprise. “What happened — did you crash her? Sell her perhaps?”

James has never been able to stomach the contempt of another person. It makes that ugly black fury that dwells inside him writhe and lash out in words and fists and blades. But receiving it from this particular man now, all he feels is a strange numbness.

He turns and blindly grabs up a slightly fresher shirt, feeling a small measure of composure return as cloth once more covers his wrists and ribs and all the other vulnerable juts of bone.

“I flew her up the Spyglass,” he hears himself tell them. “And I left her there.”

Given the look on their faces, his two former crewmembers would rather have heard he’d lit the ship on fire and sent it crashing into the ground.

The French call it _Le Mort Du Fou_ ; the Spanish, Montaña de la Muerte. The Royal Geographical Society in London named it after Allen Strudwick, the first Englishman to make a landing on one of the lower ridges. But most airmen in the range only know it by one name.

The Spyglass is not quite the tallest peak in the range, but it is by far the most treacherous. Few can handle the wind and white-out conditions that persist in its vicinity, and even fewer have flown up to within one-thousand feet of its summit. One does not risk merely dying, but dying a slow and lonesome death, the type all men instinctively fear.

James remembers swirling snow and frost forming on his beard; he remembers looking out over the white void below and thinking about staying with his ship. Going into his cabin and sitting down at his desk, maybe putting pen to paper like Hallendale. He’d wondered how many pages he could cover before the ink froze.

“So I suppose you’ll be wanting to find a different ship,” he says.

 

 **VI:** **when the war didn’t kill us**

 

Saint Lucia was never supposed to be more than a brief resting spot. They were going to refit the ship, get some sleep, and then move on to fill the gaping vacancies of their crew. The intention was always to go back on the account.

Instead, one night became two, three. A week. A couple men would disappear overnight and not come back. Slowly, they all stopped returning to the ship to bunk down.

The _Walrus_ floated in the dock like a ghost ship. James would sometimes stumble outside to get some air and find himself gazing up at its silhouette in the gathering dusk for over an hour. Thoughts about cutting its tethers and letting it just drift up and away hovered on the edge of persuasion.

He didn’t feel like he belonged in the air anymore. Failure had made him heavy. He didn’t fly even in his dreams.

It was one of those nights that it first happened. He came back inside, eyes squinting against the sudden brightness of the tavern. When his vision adjusted the lanterns back down to a reasonable level, John Silver’s face had been in front of him, his features startlingly clear and concerned.

They never fucked before the war.

Maybe that was the problem, that it all got tied up with that terrible black period after their defeat. Maybe he was foolishly naive for thinking it could ever have gone differently, that there’d ever even been a chance for tenderness between men such as they.

Perhaps it always had to be like this: shoving each other through the doorway of their temporary shared quarters, James’s hands fisted too tight in John’s hair, John biting his lip until it bled, hips locked together so tight they’d both have bruises the next day.

After, one of them would silently move to the second bed. They’d lie wide awake in the dark, not speaking, barely breathing. James allowed himself in those moments to imagine that John was harboring the same thoughts, just waiting for the other to speak up and define whatever it was they were doing.

It never happened. They both seemed to have finally run out of words.

—

He sups on bread and cheese and a small bowl of stew. Neither of the two men come down from his room, so he tells himself the situation has been resolved and departs for his appointment.

It feels strange to willingly walk away from them.

The fights are held in a granary not far from the docks and scheduled around bimonthly shipments of sorghum and wheat. A day after a shipment departs, the vast empty floor of the building is packed with liquor-peddlers, bookies, and idle bodies with spare coin. At the end of the night, grain spillover from the recently vacated barrels is used to sweep up any spilled blood from the fights. James appreciates the efficiency of the operation.

The smell in the air is the first thing to hit him when he steps inside. After four years, dust from hulled grain and the lingering humid pungency of the day always signal his body to be ready to move and bleed. The ghosts that visited him today have only served to key him up further.

What must they think. The notorious Captain Flint, reduced to an attraction at a third-rate boxing ring.

He heads to his customary corner in the back to drink water and shake off any lingering sluggishness, and the gathering evening crowd gives him a wide berth. He is not exactly a local favorite; he wins too often and he’s English, besides.

He has spent a lifetime being hated for the battles he wins and hating himself for the one he loses. A lackluster audience doesn’t even register.

He strips off his shirt again, takes a bracing drink from his flask, and starts to limber up.

—

The closest they came to ever broaching the subject of the future — _their_ future — was shortly before John left, though at the time James only knew it as _Thursday (maybe Friday)_. It didn’t go well.

John said, apropos of nothing, “You know, it could be worse.”

As a rule, this is a phrase that only invites violence upon the fool who utters it. But James was feeling tolerant, perhaps due to the past half hour he’d spent idly thinking about the other man’s dick.

“How?” Billy asked, voice hollow.

“We could all be dead,” John said. “Instead of, you know, only most of us being dead.”

In response to this, Billy picked up his full pint and drained it with determination. Rivulets escaped the corners of his mouth, but he didn’t lower the glass until it was empty. Then he slammed it down on the counter and motioned to the bartender.

James watched John watch this display. There was something awake in his gaze that he didn’t understand at the time, though later he would think back and realize it was the beginning of the end.

“Do you two think we’re all drinking too much?”

Billy turned his head and together James and he stared down the counter at John.

“Maybe we’re looking at this all wrong,” he persisted, in that maddeningly reasonable tone he used to wield like a weapon, long before he made a habit of carrying real ones. “Maybe when the war didn’t kill us, we should have taken that as a second chance and ran with it.”

And James doesn’t remember the finer details of the conversation after that (which quickly turned into an argument), but he remembers the surprise burn of betrayal at those words.

His failure was almost too big to comprehend even on his more sober days. It went beyond the political realities of the English flag flying over Nassau once more. Even the physical realities — he’d lost his crew their home, many of them their _lives —_ paled next to the shattered mirror shards of his own self-conception.

The atrocities that were whispered far and wide and the smaller moments of violence no one, let alone he, could even remember anymore? It had all been for nothing. All he was, all he had been, was sacrificed on the altar of Nassau and in the end the sum total of his struggles amounted to this, _here_ , sitting in a French colonial tavern with the world around him fundamentally unchanged.

McGraw was dying. He could feel it happening by the day. Memories of his old life were fading, but the feelings attached to them didn’t have the decency to do the same. He caught himself in quiet moments trying to remember the curve of Miranda’s jawline, the exact shade of Thomas’s hair. Fear and panic sparked when he failed.

None of it was what he would consider a _second chance._ But John Silver, his endlessly perceptive, empathetic quartermaster, somehow didn’t understand that.

—

James McGraw had been a skilled navigator and airman. He was lettered and had a decent head for numbers. He was not young. All these and more are excellent reasons why James could and perhaps should be earning a living by any means other than:

_Ohh!_

Dull thud of flesh on flesh and the crowd groans loudly. His opponent, a towering French brute by the name of Porcher, staggers back against a wooden post.

James paces a few steps away, watching intently. His chest is already slicked with sweat and his shoulder joint aches faintly, but the adrenaline of the fight is doing wonders for his headache.

Porcher twists and spits a hefty mouthful of blood onto the floor, inches from the nearest spectators’ boots. He shakes his head to clear off the daze and advances once more. Fists the size of a twelve-pound shot and shoulders wider than the cannon it belongs to, but the man’s too slow to win against James.

It’s a pity. He almost feels like taking a beating today.

He dodges a wide shot and neatly kicks in the man’s knee. Someone in the crowd scoffs loudly, berating Porcher with the type of potent sneer only the French can manage.

Porcher gets him in the kidneys, knocking the wind out of him. James pushes back a step, holding his side, and then it’s like stubbing a toe; his gaze slips past his opponent for just a moment and trips on John in the crowd.

God, he’s missed him.

The thought is heavy and blunt with age, worn smooth along the edges with how many times it’s been used. It shouldn’t be capable of blindsiding him, not after all this time, but that measuring blue gaze says otherwise.

McGraw believed in decency and law. He abhorred violence but understood it was necessary to keep the peace. McGraw had a bright future, and he was going to change England. He never would have become entangled with a man like John Silver.

In his distraction he takes a hard left hook to the face. Ends up on his hands and knees, back to Porcher. The crowd roars its approval, ecstatic at the idea that they may be the ones to witness him finally go down.

He breathes deliberately through his nose. Thinks, _at least it doesn’t feel broken_ , even as blood drips onto the floor. In the space between his thigh and his arm, he can see Porcher swaggering up behind him. Confident and cocky. Dumb.

His heart pounds in his ears, drowning out the cheers.

He gained exactly one thing after the war, even as he lost everything else; the truth finally came home to him in Saint Lucia.

He roars and pushes himself off the floor, fast like an updraft catching the mainsail. Turns as he goes, and catches only a glimpse of Porcher’s shocked face before he swings his fist up under his jaw and sends him flying backwards in a neck-cracking arc. The crowd’s cheers die down, shocked.

The truth? _There’s always only ever been James Flint_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Profuse thanks for [twobrokenwyngs/xJuniperx](http://twobrokenwyngs.tumblr.com/) for the beta! She certified Flint before I let him out into the world.


	3. Chapter 3

**VII: trying to make you care**

 

The room is a tight milling mess after the fight. Excitement and a sort of exhilaration linger in the air, so it seems that four years of Flint fighting has dulled neither his audience’s appetite for violence nor their skepticism at his ability to follow through with it.

John doesn’t even know why he’s here. Morbid curiosity, perhaps. That would be a nice change of pace from reluctant concern and grudging obligation.

He sees the back of Flint’s head slip out a side door and, after some strategic deployment of his cane on the thick crowd of people in his way, he hastens after.

John notices he is not the only one following Flint; the big fellow from the fight has regained consciousness. Judging by the belligerent set of his face and his shoulders, he is looking to settle the score.

“...think I was going to let that humiliation stand?” the man is asking in English by the time John makes it outside.

They are in a narrow alley off the main street. If it were not for the near-full moon in transit overhead, John would not be able to see anything. As it is, he has trouble making out Flint’s reaction when he sees John emerge from the side door.

The Frenchman continues, “You don’t give a man a beating like that and just walk away.”

“Evidence would suggest otherwise,” John says, because he just can’t help it.

The man turns and blinks at him, clearly not having clocked his presence until now. “Who are you?”

John raises one hand and flicks the fingers out from the one resting on his cane. “Neutral bystander.”

“Keep it that way,” the man says. He turns back to Flint. “I’ve heard about you. They say you were once a pirate, a pestilence carried by the wind to destroy decent men. I don’t know why you’ve been allowed to remain here for so long, but I think it’s high time Saint Lucia be rid of you.”

Flint watches the man silently, by all appearances unmoved. And yet, he also does nothing to end the encounter. Silver shifts on his feet impatiently.

“Are you even listening?” The man snarls. He steps forward, challenging.

John pulls out his pistol and shoots him. The point-blank shot echoes loudly in the narrow space and the man falls, clutching his shoulder. For a few moments, the only sound is the man’s whimpers.    

Flint looks from the bleeding man on the ground to John, who tucks the pistol back into his belt.

“Do you always walk around with a loaded pistol?” is all he ends up saying.

“Maybe I was hoping to use it on you,” John says. “Or myself, perhaps, if you vexed me enough.”

“Feel free to reload. Go on, I'll wait.”

“Don't tempt me.” John glances down the alley. “We should go.”

Without another word, Flint steps over the body and continues down the alley. John, feeling like he's paying unwilling homage to the past, follows him. He doesn’t know why he does it, but then, he never really did.

—

It’s only as they are making their way up the tavern’s steep stairway that John notices Flint is injured. The stiff way he carries his upper body suggests damage to his ribs.

“Where is Billy?” Flint asks as they reach the miserable attic room. He walks over to the used basin and plunges his hands in, no doubt trying to soothe his reddened knuckles with the lukewarm water.

“Hopefully not backsliding into a bottle. Your news of the fate of the Walrus was an unpleasant shock.”

Flint only shrugs – or tries to. The aborted movement confirms John's suspicions.

“You're injured.”

“It's nothing,” Flint says, not glancing around. “Why have you not left? You heard me before, I don't have the ship. There is nothing to keep you here.”

John steps forward and notices how the other man's shoulders tense up at the tap of his boot. For a moment it’s all he can focus on, so when he speaks, it’s without really paying attention to what comes out. “No passage out of Saint Lucia until tomorrow. I have nowhere else to be until then.”

Flint turns around. He looks almost angry when he meets John’s eyes. “There's an inn beside the port. I suggest you avail yourself of its services.”

“In time,” John agrees. “You're favoring your right side.”

“Blow to the kidney before I ended the fight. It’s fine. Why aren’t you leaving?”

John doesn’t like questions he doesn’t know how to answer, so he ignores Flint’s and says, “Your ribs might be broken. You’ll need to wrap them.”

“Have you suffered some critical loss of hearing in the past few years?” Flint demands.

“Stop being a stubborn ass and let me check.”

Flint narrows his eyes. “If you were any other man, I'd have you on the floor for speaking to me like that.”

“Yes, I lead a privileged existence. I'm aware.” John puts a hand on Flint's shoulder and, ignoring the heat under his palm, neatly shoves. Flint's legs fold and he sits on the edge of the cot, face wiped momentarily clean in surprise.

John hooks his metal boot through the leg of the small table and drags it over to use as a stool. He thinks if he just keeps moving, he can pretend that this is all completely normal.

Flint's expression doesn't so much as flicker when John rucks up his shirt and places the pads of his fingers on his ribs, but that doesn't necessarily tell him anything. Physical pain has never mattered to Flint, who has always borne knife and gunshot wounds as if they were no more than minor inconveniences.

John softly probes along the line of the bones, feeling for cracks and determinedly ignoring the voice in his head demanding to know what he is doing. Touching Flint has never led anywhere good.

Eventually, as inevitable as the sun rise, his mind starts to wander away from its task. The feeling of sweat-slicked muscles under his hand, the warmth of the room, the steady rise and fall of Flint's chest with every breath – it all calls forth an inexorable response in his own body.

John's breathing subtly changes. His dick's not hard, but it feels heavy between his legs. Almost without his permission, his hand flattens, following the curve of Flint's ribs. The movement is blatantly beyond the realm of diagnosis.

When he glances up, Flint's eyes are sharp with awareness.

“So you do still want to fuck me,” he says.

John's lets his hands drop and he pushes away from the cot, from the man. He grits his teeth. “That was never the problem, and you know it.”

“All I _know_ ,” Flint says, anger threading back into his voice, ready as the wind, “is that you left.”

“I had to leave. You didn’t give me any other choice.”

Flint barks a laugh and his face contorts. John looks away so he doesn’t have to see the self-loathing he knows is there.

“Give you a choice? I asked you to stay. Fuck, I _begged_ you to stay.” His tone reveals exactly how disgusted he is at the memory.

“Oh yes,” Silver says unsteadily, the old suffocating despair returning like a second pox. “You begged me to stay. You would have said anything — ”

“Yes. Yes, I _would’ve_ — ” Flint shouts, throwing discretion overboard.

“Anything but that you would change, or try to get better.” John swings back around, feeling wild, unhinged in a way only Flint could provoke. “You don’t understand. You never did. Trying to make you care about your life was going to be the end of mine.”

Flint stares at him, suddenly very pale. He looks sick, but he doesn’t have anything to offer Silver. Four years and that hasn’t changed either.

Suddenly very tired, Silver turns back towards the door. “Fuck you, James.”

 

**VIII. couldn’t keep him**

 

When Max left Billy and John to talk to Captain Flint and convince him of the merits of their plan, she wasn’t expecting news of an easy victory. The extent of their failure, however, is almost breathtaking.

“So to recap, Captain Flint abandoned the ship we need on top of a mountain that is near impossible to navigate without said ship, he is now off somewhere possibly killing himself in a ring, and you have lost track of the one man who might be able to persuade him to our side.” She turns on her heel and looks at Billy. “Does that cover everything?”

Billy folds his arms. “I didn’t lose Silver.”

“Where is he then?”

“Hopefully not backsliding into Flint,” Billy says. “That’s the last thing we need.”

Max pauses and looks at him in surprise.

Billy nods wearily. “Yes. You heard right.”

Max considers for a moment. “I did not know this. But it explains a lot.”

“Does it? It never made much sense to me. Silver has the strongest survival instinct I’ve ever seen, but when it comes to the captain he has a blind spot the size of the _Walrus_.”

“The heart works in strange ways.” She pauses. “The cock, not so strange. But it’s a complication nonetheless.”

Billy is charmingly disgruntled. “I’ve spent most of my life watching men bumble into disasters because they couldn’t keep their minds off fucking. There is no reasoning with them in that state.”

“You are skilled at manipulating men’s minds, Mr. Manderly. But as you say, sometimes men are ruled by baser things.” Max pats him on the forearm as she walks past him. “I will deal with it.”

—

It’s late when Max finds him. The moon has long since set behind the mountains, casting the city in shadows so impenetrable, one cannot walk across a street without losing track of the other side. Thankfully, the inn provides lanterns to all its guests.

John is nursing a bottle down by the docks. He sits balanced on a railing, trading off between swigs and scowls at the small array of airships, which are only visible as a string of lights bobbing in the darkness like fireflies.

“I recognize that look,” she says by way of announcing herself. She props her lantern on the railing and leans next to it. She smiles up at him. “That look says, ‘do I really need my heart? Maybe I can do without it.’”

He breathes out a short humorless laugh. “I see you’ve talked with Billy. Discretion never did sit well with that man.”

“Was it a secret you had intended to keep?”

He looks away, back at the ships. The lantern light flickers over his face, making him appear unusually solemn. “No, I suppose not. Not really.”

“You might have told me yourself,” she says. “Now I understand why you were so reluctant to come in the first place. I take it whatever occurred between you and Captain Flint ended badly?”

“ _Ended badly_ implies there was a point it had ever gone well.” John shakes his head and brandishes the bottle at her. “Look at me. Twelve hours back in Saint Lucia and already back at it.”

By _it_ , she does not know if he means the rum or Flint. Regardless, she attempts to reassure him. “It’s understandable, seeing him after so long.”

He shakes his head, and something about his emphasis of the movement makes her wonder just how long he’s been sitting out here drinking. His unusual openness only underlines the question.

“Nothing is understandable when it comes to him. Never has been. You know, I used to think nothing could stop him? I mean — _nothing_.”

Max feels an unwelcome pang of familiarity. She remembers a time when she thought the same of Eleanor. She’d been captivated by the way the other woman could enter a room and command attention and respect. Max had never known anyone quite like her before. For a long time, she thought that meant something.

John takes a drink, still staring up at the ships. “What I didn’t realize was the necessary corollary to my logic. That if James was going to be stopped, it would have to be by his own hand. And I thought maybe I could hold him back from that edge.”

Max wonders if he even realizes he has slipped into the familiar. “After the war, you mean.”

“I thought. We lost, but at least that meant the fight was over. But it wasn’t. And I wasn’t enough.” John shrugs, like it’s a simple matter.

Max is quiet for so long that he glances over as if to check that she is still there. She is overcome with a bleak sort of understanding. Some of it must show on her face, for he seems to take it as the badge of a fellow sufferer. He wordlessly hands her the bottle.

She wraps a hand around its neck and takes an altogether undainty draft.

“Anne or Eleanor?” He asks quietly.

She smiles, but can feel the way her eyes refuse to follow along with the act. “Both, in their own, unique way.” She takes another drink. “You know, I don’t think I have a talent for loving happy people.”

John’s smile goes a little wry at the corners. He nods in rueful understanding.

“So tell me your secret, John,” she says briskly. “You have Madi. She seems wonderfully content.”

“She’d laugh for ten minutes straight if she heard anyone call her _content_.” He thinks for a moment. “You really want to know the secret? Madi doesn’t need me. It’s one of the things I love about her.”

“Oh John,” she says quietly. She doesn’t know what else to say. No one has ever needed her, not once in her entire life. It seems an unfair twist of fate that someone else would fear that which she has wanted but never attained.

He shrugs but doesn’t say anything for a long moment.

All at once it seems that they both become aware of the intimacy of the scene, huddled close in Max’s lonely lantern halo against the darkness of the dock. John clears his throat and Max takes another drink.

“So I’m sure Billy told you of the fate of the _Walrus_. I’m afraid we’ll have to find a different ship.”  

Max lowers the bottle and stares at him. He notices the change in her demeanor and raises an eyebrow.

“What?” He asks.

“John, there is no other ship.” She looks at him, amazement foiling her ability to withhold judgment. “Do you honestly think I would have gone to the trouble of rounding you all up if I could have simply hired another ship and crew?”

Genuine surprise fills his face. “What do you mean? There’s always a way to — ”

“No,” she says firmly. “With Governor Rogers’s recent crackdowns on piracy in the range, there is a shortage of available vessels. There simply is no other airship, not one that cannot be traced back to me.”

He shakes his head. “What are you suggesting, exactly?”

“Captain Flint has hidden the Walrus somewhere up the Spyglass, yes? We have no other option but to go retrieve it.”

John blinks down at her in astonishment for a second before laughter comes bubbling up out of him. He throws his head back and lets it all out. If she didn’t know better, she’d say it is tinged slightly with hysteria. She hefts the depleted bottle with new consideration.

Her theory is confirmed when he unbalances and falls backwards off the railing. He lands on his back in the dirt. It knocks the wind out of him for a moment, but somehow he finds enough air to laugh with renewed vigor.

“This is no laughing matter,” she informs him severely, craning her neck over the railing.

With great apparent difficulty, he gets himself back under control, although his breath is still a little on the wheezing side. He looks up at Max; she merely raises her eyebrows and waits. His smiles slowly fades.

He rolls his head against the ground and stares up at the stars above for a long moment. Then he sighs.

“Yes, all right. Why not?”

 

**IX. a fuck or two before I die**

 

After John leaves, _again_ , James wonders why he keeps doing this to himself. He always thinks there is no way he could possibly feel any worse and then has to prove himself wrong in the very next breath.

If someone had asked him a week or even a day ago if he thought he’d feel better if he could just yell at John Silver one more time, he would have likely given an emphatic _yes._ But now all he can think is _what a waste._  

He should have at least seen if John would let him suck his cock before he engaged him in an argument. The thought is pitiful but brutally pragmatic, for he hasn’t had anything but the occasional depressing session with his own hand in several years. Most nights it was better to drink until he could not physically get it up.

Like any military man, he falls gratefully back on routine to see him through trying times. That is to say, he goes downstairs and orders a drink.

He’s nursing his fifth when a familiar long form folds itself onto the stool next to him. James sighs.

“What part of ‘I don’t have the ship anymore’ did you two not comprehend?”

Billy frowns. “So Silver _was_ here. Great. Did you two at least fuck and get it out of your systems?”

God, James wishes. It probably wouldn’t have took the first time, so they’d have to do it two or three more, just in case. If James still believed in God, he might offer up a prayer. _Our father who art in heaven, please let me have a fuck or two before I die and go to hell._

“Billy, did it ever occur to you that you might have a sunnier disposition if you simply gave in and had sex?” It’s a question James has asked himself many a time over the years, usually when Billy was being a singular irritant.

“No,” Billy says. “Anyway, listen, we’re going to need you to draw up a map to the exact location where you stashed the _Walrus_.”

James throws back the rest of his drink.

“Why, do you want a souvenir of this trip down memory lane?” He asks through the burn. He signals the bartender for another.

“Why does one ever want a map?” Billy says. “We need it to navigate. We’re going to go get the ship.”

James snorts. ”Even with a map, neither of you have the ability to maneuver a ship up the Spyglass.”

“We’ll have to manage. And Rackham should be joining us shortly. He has some skill in navigation at least.”

“And what will you use to get there? I highly doubt any captain will lend you their ship if they know where you plan on taking it.”

“Well, which ship did you borrow when you went in the first place?”

“I didn’t.”

Billy furrows his brow. “I don’t follow. You didn’t have a second ship?” At James’s confirming nod, he asks, “But then how did you get back here?”

“I descended the peak. On foot.” After shooting the skeleton crew that had tried to mutiny when they realized he intended to leave the _Walrus_ , but he didn’t share that detail with Billy. If they make it up the Spyglass, they’ll see the bodies. Nothing decomposes that far up.

Billy’s mouth is hanging open slightly. James takes a peculiar sort of pleasure in that. What’s the use in almost dying of hypothermia unless it can shock defiant ex-crewmembers into silence.

“Do you want a drink?” He inquires after a moment.

“I — no,” Billy says. “I’m fine, thank you.”

James shrugs. They sit quietly for a time before Billy finally shakes his head. He still looks a little dazed, but he pins him with an expectant look. “So will you do it? Will you make the map?”

“If it means you will both leave in me peace, then yes, I’ll make the map.”

Another reason he’d go to hell; he is a liar. If he thought it would make them stay, James would withhold the map forever. Luckily, he is not harboring any such delusion that this would work.

Relief makes Billy’s shoulder loosen. Flint rolls rum around his mouth and watches him thoughtfully.

“So what’s all this about, then?” He asks eventually. He gestures at Billy. “You’ve never been one to care much about riches. What do you need the funds for?”

In a roundabout way, he is asking what Billy did with himself after leaving Saint Lucia. It seems easier to inquire in this manner, however.

Billy hesitates. “I operate a press out of Inagua. My circulation is rather small, but the work is at least interesting.”

Surprise — sincere, pleasant surprise — washes over him.

“A press?” He says slowly. “What do you print? No — let me guess.” He puts up a hand to forestall Billy’s explanation. “Radical screeds on the collusion of church and state to subvert the social contract? Or the necessity of universal equality before the law between the sexes? Perhaps the elimination of the House of Lords?”

At least one of those ideas had likely been bandied about the Hamiltons’ sitting room in the past, but looking at Billy now, he finds it easy to imagine him meaning it with a commitment most of the salon attendees lacked.

Billy resolutely does not smile, though it’s hard to tell because he’s turned his head away and all James can really see is his reddened ear.

“I’ve been on a more economic bent, these last couple of pamphlets,” he says after a moment, having regained control of himself. “Trade determines every action England takes, from domestic social policy to her relations with the continent. I think if I am to have any luck enacting change, it may be through that.”

“And if war breaks out with France or Spain, do you think anyone will heed your words then?”

“Some men never will. War just gives them a ready excuse. But there will also always be men who do listen. They’re my audience.”

James twirls his glass, idly watching the liquor coat the sides. “Have you never considered returning home and reconnecting with your parents? Surely after your impressment they became more active than ever.”

Billy shakes his head and says in a tone that holds no hesitation, “No. Never.”

“It’s been years,” James says. “So why not?”

Billy runs a finger over a scar in the bar’s wooden surface and doesn’t look at James for a long moment. Finally he says, “I want to believe I can make my way back to the man I would have been, the one my parents raised me to be. But what if I can’t? That would be breaking their hearts twice over. And I won’t do that.”

Maybe it’s the sixth drink still on his tongue while the third and fourth are finally giving him a little feeling and interest. Or maybe it’s that James has grown so used to his own putrid negativity that it’s a shock hearing anyone else’s. But Flint never would have tolerated the rubbish Billy has just uttered.

Broken, regretful men are useless to a crew. And despite his reputation, he was as skilled at more than one type of motivating speech.

“You are the man your parents raised you to be,” he says. “You always have been. He did not disappear the day you were grabbed on the street, nor when you took up a pistol and shot that tyrannical fuck of a captain.”

Billy shakes his head, unwilling to be convinced. But his eyes snap back when Flint sharpens his tone. A crewman’s reflex.

“Your parents were levellers, correct? Believed in freedom, equality, fairness? When have you ever not stood up for these things? Christ, man, you were surrounded by murdering, whoring illiterates with souls as black as the mountain rock we flew over, and you still insisted on them all getting an equal share and vote.”

“Always knew that’s how you felt about the men,” Billy mutters. Then, louder: “I wasn’t just _around_ them. I was one of them. I murdered, I thieved, I — ”

“Certainly didn’t whore — ”

“I committed _unspeakable_ acts,” Billy says, glaring. “They come back to me sometimes in the middle of the night. Visions of the innocent faces I cut down. That doesn’t just go away because I wish it to.”

“But you think the good does,” James says. He swaps out his glass for one that is topped up.

Billy blinks. “What?”

“You think the evil you’ve committed has negated the good. Or maybe that it prevents you from doing good again?”

Billy has cottoned on to his angle but still looks mulish. James leans forward.

“You can’t change the past. But who says you need to? You were only known as Billy Bones in the West Indies. What man still stands who knows who you are, who can come after you for your sins? There isn’t one. So maybe you should move forward, try your best, and perhaps go visit your fucking parents while you still have the chance.”

Conflict had been growing on Billy’s face for the duration of the speech, but any potential that he may heed the words dies at the mention of his parents. He rears back.

“Can’t change the past?” he repeats incredulously. “ _Move forward?_ Do you even hear yourself? How am I supposed to believe in those words, when they come from _you_? It’d be like soliciting Silver for wisdom on the worth of one’s roots.”

James lets his posture relax back into its customary slouch. Sour embarrassment at his brief spark of animation makes him reach for his glass. The thrill of the debate starts to fade even before the liquor touches his tongue and deadens it once more.

“Just because the advice doesn’t apply to me, doesn’t make it untrue.”

“Bullshit.”

James shrugs, bored and weary of the conversation. Dour silence is truly underrated by society.

Billy, for some reason, doesn’t leave. His appetite for quarreling is bottomless, James had forgotten this. He braces himself for whatever new tirade the other man has waiting in the wings.

But to his bemusement, Billy instead just slumps forward, elbows on the bar. James looks at him sidelong and sips his drink.

“Sorry,” he says, rubbing his eyes. “You meant well. That’s rare enough, I suppose I shouldn’t discourage it.”

James wonders if all of Billy’s apologies are backhanded, or if that’s just reserved for him.

“What you said about Silver,” he says instead of acknowledging the apology. “What did you mean, precisely?”

Billy shrugs. “Surely you’ve noticed. Silver likes it best when he can pretend he springs anew fully formed every morning.” At James’s blank look, Billy casts about for an example. “It’s as if — all right, remember the night he killed Dufresne?”

His voice doesn’t hesitate on the name, which is new. James knows that the two had once been close friends. He nods for him to continue.

“Well, as you know, that hadn’t been the plan. At all. Our presence was supposed to be enough. Throw in some grandstanding from Silver — you know how he gets — and the job would be done. Except Mr. Dufresne was there. He started in on how he _knew_ Silver, knew what kind of man he’d been. And Silver snapped.”

In James’s mind, all the John Silvers he’d known were one and the same. He couldn’t separate them out. In the beginning he’d taken the man at face value, but that had ended some time around the careening incident with Randall. He wonders now if he is alone in thinking this way, if even John himself prefers to pretend he became someone else when he lost his leg.

As if from a great distance, he hears Billy say, “You won’t let go of the past, and he’s terrified of remembering it. I suppose that’s why it’s always been such a struggle with you two.”

James’ throat works for a moment, but he manages a noncommittal noise.

“That, and you’re both impossible nightmares.”

Surprised, James looks up in time to see the ghost of a smile on Billy’s face as he stands. Oh, he’s leaving, James thinks blankly. Except then Billy wavers, undecided, long enough for James to stare up at him in confusion.

“What is it?”  

Billy takes a breath. “If you ever decide to leave this place — and, I suppose, if I survive all that’s about to occur — well, look. Here.” He shoves a folded note into James’s hands.

Curious and completely unsuspecting, James unfolds the note. It reads: _West Indies Truth & Letters, 312 West Peak B, Inagua. _

The fingers holding the note go numb.

“I think you might find the work enjoyable. Heard somewhere that you could read,” Billy says, tone attempting to sound light-hearted and failing spectacularly. He clears his throat. “Anyway, it was just a thought.”

James does not, _can_ not, look up. There’s a dreadful burn in his throat and to his horror, the letters on the page blur a little. He blinks but his vision does not restore itself. He doesn’t move for a long moment.

By the time he has collected himself and is ready to brandish the note and give his sincere but regretful appreciation — because of course he can’t _go_ — Billy has left the tavern.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My heartfelt gratitude to [twobrokenwyngs/xJuniperx](http://twobrokenwyngs.tumblr.com/) for the beta!


	4. Chapter 4

**X: the grace of ignorance**

 

Hours pass after Billy leaves, and the familiar sounds and sights fill up the tavern. His surroundings slowly reveal themselves to be wholly unchanged.

When he makes his late night stumble up the stairs, hand relying heavy on the assistance of the bannister, he thinks it’s as if the others had never been here at all. Only one difference rears its head in the night; his inebriation sings him to bed with lullabies of good intentions for the morrow.

He has a map to make.

He sleeps for a few hours. It’s mostly chemical in nature — if not for the rum, he doubts he could have caught an hour of shut-eye between the dull pain in his side and lingering memories from his interactions throughout the day.

And because his subconscious has all the subtlety of a shot across the bow, he dreams of John.

They’re in their old room. He knows with the omnipotence of a dreamer that it is only a few days before John will leave him. But as with all dreams, there are details that don’t belong.

They’re fucking against the open window sill — a moment of recklessness they never indulged in reality, for Saint Lucia is no pirate haven and sodomy is punishable by death. James has his hands braced on either side of the window frame, and they are facing each other, which they also never did.

Even down a leg and a stone, John Silver has more vitality in him than any two other men combined. Looking at him, feeling him move, James feels ravenous for it. Like if he just tried enough, he might absorb some of that energy for himself.

As if to punctuate this emptiness, John isn’t looking at him; instead, his gaze is directed over his shoulder, out the window.

“What are you looking at?”

He imagines the pass in the distance at his back, and the sun breaking out over the top and flooding the valley with light. True to life, he doesn’t get to see it for himself, only as a reflection in the other man’s eyes.

But John ducks his head forward and says right into his ear, ever willing to share, “The morning.”

—

He wakes with the dawning sun, early enough that the hangover hasn’t fully set in. A buzzing, thirsty sort of jitteriness occupies his limbs and prevents him from finding either physical or mental comfort. He tosses and turns on his cot.

After ten minutes, he accepts that sleep is a lost cause. He sits up and swings his feet to the floor. With hands that shake only a little, he gathers his hair up out of his face into a neat queue. Then he surveys the room.

The small window has never provided much in the way of light, but it’s enough to get the general state of his berth and its contents. He finds himself staring at the piles of dirty clothes and scattered bottles that cover most of the floor. They haven’t moved since the previous night, but he can’t help but feel something in their character has altered.

He’s in a strange mood. That much is clear. He tries to set it aside and get on with things, for he has a map to make. This sense of purpose is enough to drive him through the lingering haze of the drink and out into the pale-washed streets of the morning.

He spends some of his precious coin on good parchment and ink. The feeling of the materials is curiously comforting against the dry pads of his fingertips.

When he returns to the tavern, he orders beer, porridge, and a side of rashers from a surprised barkeep. He’s not usually up this early, let alone indulging in breakfast. He eats quickly, impatient to get on with the day. When he has finished, he retreats back up to his room with his supplies.

He kicks the bottles and laundry into a corner to get them out of the way, figuring he’ll clean up later. Then he drags the small table close to the cot, which is his only sitting surface. He doesn’t usually spend much time up here during the day.

It’s almost meditative, setting out the ink and paper, the straightedge and compass. Gathering up his weathered notes from the journey up the Spyglass. He can already see that his writing is going to be a devil to decipher, the ink having bled and blurred from the whipping snow on that day years ago.

He doesn’t think of much of anything as he prepares the materials. He doesn’t even know why he feels the compulsion to make the map. He’d like to claim boredom, but Billy’s relief is too fresh in his mind.

So, too, is John’s _fuck you, James_.

It takes about three hours. The assemblage and deciphering of his own log of the conditions and times. Estimating lines from his memory of dead reckoning in the air. He might be a drunk, but damn if he’ll produce a shoddy map. Though he has killed many people, it was never through incompetence.

After he’s added the final touches to his navigation notes, he sets the map carefully down so that it may dry evenly.

The writing callous on his middle finger is tender from so much use after going years without. He runs his thumb over it consideringly and stares at the map. The cache of empty bottles in the background seem to take on a greater prominence now that he is no longer focusing on drafting.

Even after four years in the bottle, he hasn’t been allowed the grace of ignorance. He knows why they left him. He doesn’t blame them. He’d leave too, if he could.

It would be a simple enough matter to use his next winnings to book passage out of Saint Lucia. He wouldn’t even need to stay in the West Indies. There’s always Boston or some other northern city that won’t be on the lookout for a man matching the description of Captain Flint.

He could go anywhere, _be_ anyone. But there’s a chasm between this rational knowledge and what he can convince his body to do. He’d like to claim that he’s tried to bridge it, but he’s never even gotten so far as an attempt.

His door creaks open.

He says without looking up, “If you’ve come to badger me about the map, you needn’t bother. It’s done. All it requires is time for the ink to set.”

And John says, “I’ll wait.” 

 

**XI: the most sublime rebellion**

 

John watches the tension gather along James’s shoulders.

“I assumed Billy would be the one to fetch the map.”

“I volunteered,” John says. “Max went to meet Rackham and Billy is looking to secure a ship that might take us up the Spyglass.”

James flicks the corner of the drying map. “For a man so adamant he had to leave, you are doing a piss-poor job of staying gone.”

John is tired and fairly wrecked from his own hangover. He doesn’t think he has the stamina of an alcoholic, to feel like this every morning. He doesn’t know how Flint does it. “So once again I end up hanging around you. Can you really claim to be surprised?”

James finally turns and meets his eyes. “Yes.”

He walks wearily over to the cot and sits on the edge next to the other man. Ignoring how James stiffens, he leans forward and examines the map spread out over the small table.

It’s cleanly done, almost astonishingly so. He notes the neat penmanship of the lettering and the matching “ _J.F._ ” signed in the corner. The signature is small and unobtrusive, so unlike the man it belongs to.

“One would never guess the hand that drafted this was prone to shaking,” he comments.

James says, rather severely, “I _am_ capable of functioning. I was drunk for almost the entirety of my first year after leaving England, and it didn’t stop me from gaining my captaincy over the _Walrus_ crew.”

“Do you imagine I find that in any way reassuring?” John asks, and he turns to look at him, honestly curious.

James is matter-of-fact. “It wasn’t intended to reassure. I was merely stating the truth.”

Of course.

John sighs and sits back from the table. His hand stretches absently down his right leg, surreptitiously attempting to massage the faint ache in the muscles there.

The weather is likely to turn soon, and he hopes it will hold off until they are well away from here. He pictures the fog rolling in to hide the Saint Lucia valley as they fly away, obscuring the buildings and streets and trapping Flint down on the ground.

He looks again at James and, with the recklessness of one who is sure he will never have another chance, studies him frankly.

James stares back, because he has never been the type of man who looks away, even when clearly uncertain and discomfited.

His face holds the turning points of John’s life in the lines around his mouth and the shadows of his eyes. John thinks of many things when he looks at him, but one of the most immediate is his own becoming. It’s why this is all so hard.

He wonders if one is ever really free of people, or if it’s always like this — pieces of oneself purloined and held hostage, regardless of reason or advisability.

By any possible measure, Max has triumphed over obstacles and hardships in life, and yet last night he found that even she is not immune to this most human of weaknesses. But he wants to be free of this feeling. He thinks the only way to do that is let loose all his unspoken words, like one might flush a wound before bandaging.

Intent is all well and good, but it does nothing to stop the words from sounding like they are being dragged out of him via some medieval torture.

“Despite what you might think, I have missed you.”

James takes that in, clearly biting back what John is sure would have been a magnificently cutting response. After a moment, he only says, with difficulty, “I’ve never known you to deny yourself.”

He laughs unsteadily. “You’re hardly a simple proposition.”

“Seems simple enough to me,” spills from James, but it’s quick and muttered to the side, almost mutinously.

John gives a performative glance around the dark and filthy room, and the other man shifts restlessly.

John says, “This isn’t an argument.”

“Perhaps I want it to be,” James counters.

John looks at him narrowly. “Do you, truly? Because I’m due to leave this place in a couple hours, and I don’t think you’ll get any satisfaction from whatever fight would take place.”

James looks away.

He thinks the man might prefer the argument, if it meant that John was staying. He’s likely so lonely, he has a hard time differentiating between good and bad interactions. The thought makes John’s heart sink.

“Perhaps I miscalculated earlier, before the Battle of Nassau,” he says, bringing a hand up to rub his face. “Before we ever came to this place. I could see how it all weighed on you — that darkness you always spoke of, how you were losing yourself in it. I didn’t — ”

He sees that James is listening, even if it’s just by the slightest tilt of his head. It helps him push through. He takes a breath and continues, “I didn’t think anything of hanging all our hopes on winning Nassau. I suppose I never really thought we might lose.” He shakes his head and marvels at himself. “I truly believed we would win.”

After a moment, James offers, “I can be very persuasive.”

His tone of voice is so close to what it once had been, so close to that quiet, wry man John had discovered around a campfire in the middle of a forest one night. And that man may not be here right now, but the memory of him drives John to take impossibly foolish actions. Just like old times.

He twists on the cot and kisses him. Puts his hand against the back of his neck, as if there exists the possibility that James might jerk back instead of collapse forward, like he immediately does.

The kiss isn’t hard, or desperate. Teeth make no appearance and the tongue is barely a presence ghosting over his bottom lip. It’s the kiss they never got to have before, soft and almost casual, more of a passing acknowledgment of love than a grand declaration. Except in the way every declaration of love is grand.

 _This_ is John being cruel. Selfishly, he wants to have this at least once. Even if he has to walk out the door immediately after.

He breaks the kiss. Despite its gentle nature, he finds that he is breathing a little hard, like he’d been holding his breath the entire time.    

“Like I said,” James says hoarsely, looking him over with hooded eyes. “I can be persuasive.”

He doesn’t back away, just swallows and asks, “Why won’t you leave this place?”

James shifts and looks away. “...What would I do?”

“ _Anything_ ,” John says harshly. “Anything at all.”

“And how would that biography read?” James says. His voice contains a choked sort of humor. “‘Captain James Flint failed to free Nassau from the yoke of colonial control, failed to hold England accountable for the deaths of his loved ones, and then he, what, became a baker?’”

“And I suppose you’re honoring all that by sitting here, drinking yourself to death?” John demands. “I know you don’t believe that.”

He watches James dodge the accusation for barely a second before pressing again, “So you lost the war — you’re still _alive_. England couldn’t kill James Flint.” He searches the other man’s eyes. “Are you really going to hand it a final victory now, after all this time?”

“What _difference_ does it make? Are you trying to tell me this scene ends in any way but you walking out that door, regardless of what I choose to do?”

“No,” John says, and then watches as that hits James. “I _am_ leaving. But if I stayed, that wouldn’t change anything for you, and don’t you dare pretend it would.”

James’s face is almost white now. He stares blindly at the floor. The silence stretches, each second harder than the last for John to sit through without lashing out.

Finally, the other man admits in a near whisper, “I don’t know if I have a reason to go on.”

At that, John pitches forward, hand curling hard over James’s shoulder and forehead pressed against the hand. He squeezes his eyes shut.

He mutters into the thin, skin-warmed cloth of James’s shirt, “I can’t give you a reason. God knows I’ve tried. I want you to get better. But you have to figure it out for yourself. Everyone does, I think.”

“Did you ever have to?” James asks, turning his head so that he can look down at him.

John gives him a look that contains remnants of that old pirate spark. “Long before you ever recruited me in the fight against England, I learned that the most sublime rebellion to be had in this world is surviving when not a single other soul would care if you die.”

“People would care if you die,” Flint says sharply. John smiles faintly in response.

“A few will,” he acknowledges, thinking of Madi. “But first, I had to give them a chance to do so. Had to stop jumping ship and slipping off to new lives. I had to give them the time.”

_Will you give me that time, James?_

But James says with hopeless honestly, “I don’t know how to do that.”

John shuts his eyes briefly once more and bows his head. He allows himself just a second of feeling the warmth and nearness of the other man. And then levers himself up — off James’s shoulder, off the cot, off the edge of emotion he has been teetering on.

James watches him, eyes tracking every movement. After a second, he seems to realize what is happening, and his eyes widen. His lips mouth the word _don’t_ , but he doesn’t give the plea a voice.

They stare at each other, stricken.

It had never come natural, saying _no_ to the captain. It had been his job for a while and in that lone respect he had been a poor quartermaster to his men. Eventually, too late, the day came where he finally learned how to say it.

The trick was to hold fast to the consequences, whatever they might be.

So for the second and last time in his life, John Silver walks away from James Flint. He doesn’t turn back, not even when he hears a bottle crash and shatter against the wall.

—

He keeps his jaw clenched as he makes his way down the stairs of the tavern. Walks through the bar room without seeing any of the people around him; the men standing in his way remove themselves quickly after taking one glance at his face.  

Out on the mid-morning street, he is met by two men who do not step out of his warpath. He blinks out of his dark thoughts and glares at them. It takes a second to realize who he is seeing.

“That’s him,” Porcher, the fighter from the previous night, says. He’s hunched slightly inward, no doubt attempting to spare strain from the stitches of his gunshot wound. “That’s the villain who shot me. Told you he’d be hanging about this place.”

Dumbfounded, John looks from Porcher to the other man, who by his bearing and expression must belong to some arm of the law.

“An Englishman wreaking indiscriminate violence on our peaceful streets,” the man begins forbiddingly.

“Now, wait just a second.” John takes a step back and he raises the hand not resting on his cane.

“This will not go well for you, I’m afraid.”

John stops and sighs. “It rarely ever does.”

He spares a brief thought for how James might react to John getting arrested right outside his tavern. He figures at least he would have a visitor before the trip to the gallows.

He tucks the freshly made map into his belt to free his hands and then looks between the two men consideringly.

The law man reaches for his pistol.

John swings his cane, knocking the gun from his hands. Then he hops forwards and drives the end into his stomach. Porcher tries to swing for him with his good side, but John dodges and brings the cane’s handle to bear upon his freshly bandaged wound. Porcher falls to his knees, gasping and clutching his chest.

People on the street begin to shout and point.

With both men momentarily dispatched, John grabs up the dropped pistol and hastens down the street towards the docks.

He is not looking forward to explaining this to the others; he just knows Billy is going to be _insufferable_ about it.

 

**XII: a better plan**

 

“They’re staring,” Anne mutters sidelong to Jack.

He glances over and then makes a dismissive sound through his nose. “Of course they’re staring. They’ve probably never seen a beautiful woman in trousers before.”

And if she didn’t already know that they were going to meet up with Max, that would have cinched it. Jack always overdoes it a bit whenever she was involved, or mentioned, or suspected of being on Anne’s mind. There never was a man simultaneously so full of himself and so insecure than Jack Rackham.

If Anne didn’t love him, she would probably knife him in the stomach just to put him out of his misery.

“Perhaps we should have tried to appear more inconspicuous,” he continues. “Pirates are not very popular in this region as of late.”

“Our agreement,” she reminds him.

He says hastily, “Yes, yes, I remember. You needn’t go bringing that up.”

She looks down so the brim of her hat conceals her smirk. Rule is, she doesn’t wear a dress unless he does. To date, they’ve only had to do it one time, ducking into a brothel on the run from a couple colonial regulars two years ago.

They’re both too bony to really pull off the look, but she thought the lace had looked kind of nice against Jack’s skin.

The men of the small airship rush about the deck to prepare for docking, as ragged and disorganized as every other commercial crew she’s ever seen. Witnessing such shit flying is funny until she remembers that these men still get to be in the air, while she and Jack have been mostly grounded to avoid recognition. That sours her mood right quick.

This mood lasts until the ship is secured against the dock and they are walking down the gangplank. Then a team of men pick up a large cargo pallet from the dock and move it aside, revealing the woman waiting patiently below.

Max stands out among the milling dock crowd, and it’s not just because of the gleaming coil of her dark hair or the startling blue of her dress. It’s the way she holds herself: head up, face placid, posture perfect and confident, like beauty such as hers belongs wherever the fuck she chooses it to.

For a dizzying few months years ago, Anne got to pretend she had something to do with that confidence.

She doesn’t falter on her way down the gangplank, but only because Jack is right behind her and making him bump into her would look obvious and clumsy.

Max’s eyes alight on her and stay on her, only her, until they get near enough to speak. And then —

“Max,” Jack says, nodding.

Max smiles up at him, good-humored. “Jack, it is good to see you. I’ve enjoyed your letters. Guyana sounded fascinating.”

Because he is the one who writes back and forth to Max. Anne never does, or ever talks about it. She knows Jack always passes along her thoughts or regards or whatever the fuck. They probably sounded better coming from him anyway, except for the part where he’ll never mention how much Anne still fucking loves her.

The humor disappears from Max’s eyes when she looks back at Anne. She says quietly, “Anne. You’re looking — ”

“We need to leave,” a tall, bearded brute of a man interrupts, rushing up to Max’s side.

After a second of irritation, Anne recognizes Billy Bones, Flint’s old First Mate. And coming up behind him at an uneven but surprisingly fair clip: John Silver, Flint’s — something. His exact job title seemed to change every time she saw them.

“What’s happened?” Max asks, glancing between the two of them. Her hands tighten where she has them clasped in front of her, but it’s the only outward sign of disconcertion.

Billy throws a scowl at the just-arriving man. “Barely here twenty-four hours and Silver managed to get himself in trouble with the law. A group of armed men is headed this way as we speak.”

“Billy is, of course, neglecting to mention the most pertinent detail in all this,” Silver says. He pulls a roll of paper from his belt and waves it with flourish. “I have the map. There’s nothing keeping us here anyway.”

He says this last with a curiously bitter twist to his mouth.

“Map?” Jack asks. “What map? Why do we need a map?”

“I’ll explain it all later,” Max says quickly, turning smartly on her heel to look up at the ship they just disembarked from. “You spent a few days on this airship, yes? Would it be capable of making it up the Spyglass?”

When Jack just goggles at the preposterous question, Anne says, “The _fuck_ we going up the Spyglass for?”

“ _Please_ , Anne. Yes or no?”

Anne looks back up at the ship and eyes its lines and mast. “It’s nimble enough. But small — with the buffeting you’d get from the winds up there, you need a proper flight crew to hold the lines. And those men ain’t that.”

They all look at one another. At the far end of the port, they can hear the approaching shouts and stamping feet of men in pursuit of Silver.

“Well,” Jack says, straightening up. “It’s been a fair while since we took a ship, but I dare say we can do it.” He looks down at Anne. “What do you think, darling? Care to engage in some piracy, for old time’s sake?”

—

“Captain Neeley, I’m afraid we must depart at once,” Jack says, striding back up the gangplank and meeting the ship’s captain at the top. With him providing flash and bravado as a distraction, Anne and the others slip past quietly and spread out on the deck.

Neeley scoffs absently, eyes still mostly on the dock. “Depart? I have goods to unload and a girl up the street to see. This ship isn’t going anywhere until Friday.”

Silent and subtle, Anne unsheathes a blade and presses it against the man’s spine where no one from the dock will be able to see. The man’s back straightens and all blood drains from his face.

“As I was saying,” Jack says cheerfully, “we would like to leave immediately. Your cooperation and understanding is _most_ appreciated.”

—

They start slicing the mooring lines before anyone remaining aboard the ship notices their intentions.

Men come rushing up to the deck at the first buck of the ship. Combined with the arrival of the magistrate’s men at the dock below, they all have plenty to occupy themselves.

Anne kills another man rushing out of the hold and looks around for others.

“You have two men climbing one of the portside lines,” Max calls out.

She is standing beside the wheel and has a pistol trained on the unfortunate Captain Neeley. She looks distinctly uncomfortable holding the weapon, which might have tempted the captain to overpower her if it were not for the small fact that his legs are bound tightly together. The only thing keeping him upright is the wheel.

“Cut that line,” Jack says to Billy, who is closest.

But Silver says, “ _Wait_.” And then, something indecipherable filling his voice: “Flint. He’s coming.”

Drawn by that surprising development, they all gather by the last remaining mooring line in time to see Captain Flint run down the length of the partially retracted gangplank and leap for the rope.

He manages to catch the line with both hands and practically lands on one of the magistrate’s men in the process. After receiving an efficient kick to the face, the man falls from the rope. The second man scrabbles for his pistol while curling his other limbs frantically around the taut line.  Flint starts to climb determinedly upward.

A few heavy footsteps are all Anne has for warning before she turns and finds another crewman swinging at her with a cutlass.

She dodges the blow by mere inches and brings her knee up to catch the man on his own momentum. Then she slashes her blades efficiently across his neck.

Adrenaline pumping, she turns, breathing heavily, to look over at where the others are still gathered together, looking over the side of the ship with fascination.

A pistol shot rings out from below.

“That was close,” Jack says.

“A decent dodge,” Billy allows.

Silver says, “You should’ve seen him in the ring.”

The ship jerks again, the last mooring line suddenly free, and they all take a stabilizing step backwards. Anne imagines Flint must have cut the line loose, given none of the three dolts by the side have moved to do anything useful.

“There goes that last fellow,” Jack says, sounding as satisfied as he ever does when someone else has done the work leading to his desired outcome. His smirk fades to something less ostentatious and then all three take a step back.

A second later, Captain Flint climbs up over the railing and lands on the deck. His shirt is ripped at the shoulder and there is a graze along his cheekbone, but otherwise the blood spatter appears to belong to another man.

Anne approves.

They don’t end up killing Captain Neeley, even though he could give a physical description of all of them — including Max, who before now has never been associated directly with piracy.

Instead Flint says something into his ear that makes the man lose control of his bladder and then he shoves neatly him overboard.

“Saint Lucia’s got buoy nets,” is all he says when the others all stare at him.

They all stop staring then, except for Silver, who can’t seem to put his eyes anywhere else.

—

When they are well away from Saint Lucia and seemingly out of range of potential pursuers, everyone gets caught up on the situation — the timetable available before the treasure shipment, the location of the _Walrus_. The necessary trip up the _fucking Spyglass_.

She should have known this would happen, soon as Max mentioned who else she was bringing on. Flint’s crew always got caught up in the craziest shit.

“Excuse me,” Jack says at one point, surprised to the point where he’s almost smiling from the sheer gall of it all. “But we engaged with this mission with the specific idea that it would not be any riskier than the usual hunt. Now you tell us we are to travel up the deadliest peak in the whole of the West Indies? And after _that_ harrowing adventure we’re supposed to be fit to take a treasure?” He looks around at the group. “We did not set out upon this trip expecting to achieve the impossible.”

Flint folds his hands behind his back and gazes out over the railing at the horizon. He looks every inch the fearsome pirate captain, at least until he opens his mouth and says:

“When hope falters, sheer indifference can often see the job done.”

There’s a moment of silence as they all turn from Flint and look at Silver, except for Billy, who shakes his head slightly and stares down at the deck.

After a moment, Jack says, “Well, I feel so much more confident in our venture now.”

Silver says, “So he’s a little rusty with the inspiring speeches. Give him some time, I’m sure he’ll improve.”

Anne is not be very good with people, but she has a slight hunch that Silver might be less than objective when it comes to Flint’s usefulness.

She turns away from the conversation, glad that she is not expected to partake in the pointless bickering. The men may all argue about where they are going and what they will be doing, but the ship is still resolutely pointed in one direction, and it is all at the behest of a woman. A strong, powerful woman.

She looks across the deck to Max.

She is standing next to a mast, refusing to clutch it but obviously attempting to hold back her nausea, which struck shortly after they’d reached 1000 feet.

“Well, I’ve got a better plan this time around,” Jack is saying somewhere behind Anne, answering a question Billy had asked.

“Oh?”

“This time, once we’ve got the money and we’ve made our escape, if I utter a single word about going back, Anne is going to knock me out.”

There is a pregnant pause as Billy clearly thinks that over. “But couldn’t you just — decide that you won’t return to Nassau for any reason?”

Jack’s voice goes slightly pained. “Safer to go with the head injury.”

And Anne’s not even a party to the conversation, but she nods mentally in agreement.

—

They cannot yet see it, but far out in the distance, obscured by cloud and the range before them, the Spyglass awaits. They’ll face trial by altitude and white-out storms to fetch the _Walrus_ , but that doesn’t worry her.

There are worse things than hunger, cold, or injury.

There’s being lost in a city you’ve known for years. Standing still but feeling like you’re in free fall. Looking into a mirror and not recognizing the face staring back at you. Next to these, she will take any amount of struggle, because an undeniable truth rings out with every clash of steel on steel.

You never get to stop fighting; it’s how you know you’re still alive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A big, heartfelt shoutout to [twobrokenwyngs/xJuniperx](http://twobrokenwyngs.tumblr.com/), whose unfailing support and encouragement really helped me finish this story. (It got kind of shaky between Chapters 3 and 4, but hurray! It is now complete.)


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